with the third of the lofty "Prussian" Quartets (in F Major, K. 590). (Woodstock, N.): 845-679-8217.) CARAMOOR FESTIVAL Westchester's elegant alternative to Tanglewood has become a multifaceted festival that packs an appeal- ingly diverse range of events into a relatively short schedule. June 24 at 8:30: The excellent Orchestra of St. Luke's, Caramoor's regular band, will be led by Peter Oundjian in a gala opening-night concert that features music by Beethoven (the sprightly Symphony No. 8), Mendelssohn (the Violin Concerto, with Joshua Bell), and this year's composer-in-residence, John Musto.. June 25 at 4:30: Peter Schickele, up to his old tricks, joins two old friends (the singers Michèle Eaton and David Düsing) to offer "ED.Q. Bach: His Life, Legacy, and Leftovers," a putative life survey of the fictional composer and comedic cynosure. (Katonah, N.): 914-232-1252.) MUSIC MOUNTAIN The chamber-music festival's latest concert pairs the veteran oboist Humbert Lucarelli, an old friend of Music Mountain, with the up-and-coming Amernet String Quartet for a program of music by Shostako- vich (the Third Quartet), Mozart (the Oboe Quartet in F Major), and Beethoven (the Quartet in A Minor, Ope 132). (Falls Village, Conn. 860-824-7126. June 25 at 3.) MOVIES OPENING CLICK Adam Sandler and Kate Beckinsale star in this ro- mantic comedy, about a man whose remote con- trol permits him to fast-forward or rewind through his life. Directed by Frank Coraci. Opening June 23. (In wide release.) THE GREAT NEW WONDERFUL Reviewed below in Now Playing. Opening June 23. (Angelika Film Center and Empire 25.) HIDDEN BLADE A samurai drama, directed by Yoji Yamada. In Jap- anese. Opening June 23. (Cinema Village.) LEONARD COHEN: I'M YOUR MAN A documentary about the singer-songwriter, di- rected by Lian Lunson. Opening June 21. (Film Forum.) THE ROAD TO GUANTÁNAMO Reviewed this week in The Current Cinema. Open- ing June 23. (Angelika Film Center and Lincoln Plaza Cinemas.) TWO DRIFTERS A drama, directed by João Pedro Rodrigues, about a man and a woman who console each other after the death of their bisexual lover. In Portuguese. Opening June 23. (Quad Cinema.) WAIST DEEP Tyrese and the Game star in this action drama, di- rected by Vondie Curtis-Hall, about an ex-con whose son is kidnapped by a crime boss. Opening June 23. (In wide release.) W ASSUP ROCKERS Larry Clark directed this drama, about teen skate- boarders in South Central Los Angeles. Opening June 23. (Angelika Film Center.) NOW PLAYING THE BREAK-UP This romantic comedy, directed by Peyton Reed, stars Vince Vaughn, looking a little paunchy, as a hyper- articulate Chicago tour guide with loutish habits, and Jennifer Aniston, looking great naked from the rear, as an art -gallery saleswoman who wants peace and order. They buy a condo together, and quarrels ensue-many quarrels, some of them nicely sustained. The snippy-snappy dialogue is good enough to make you regret that the movie wasn't better thought out z as a piece of comic construction. The main trouble: what each one does professionally never feeds into @ the plot, so we are left, again and again, with noth- õ2 u.. ing but the Relationship. Eventually, the two run out ð of arguments, and the movie turns earnest and dull, z <( but there are good bits nonetheless. With Jon Fav- reau, who renews his on screen partnership with Vaughn, and Judy Davis, as Aniston's dragon-lady boss.-David Denby (In wide release.) CARS The new Pixar project depicts an America populated wholly by cars. They do not merely cram the roads; they run the gas stations and the diners, too. (If you expect that such a fantasy must, in these fuel-nervous times, have a satirical edge, think again.) Owen Wil- son, tacking between the smarmy and the plaintive, provides the voice of Lightning McQueen-a cocky, friendless race car who, after a bunch of mishaps, winds up in a small town and there, with the help of some newfound companions, finds his purpose in life. All of which is a reminder that Pixar is a subsidiary of Disney. The digital detailing is often astonishing, but much of the sly wit that perked up "Toy Story" and "The Incredibles" seems to have drained away, and, in the end, the strain of having to care about the fate of grinning automobiles is just too much. Can it be right that a film of this sophistication should re- mind us of "Thomas the Tank Engine"? Other voices belong to Bonnie Hunt, Larry the Cable Guy, and a growling Paul Newman.-Anthony Lane (Reviewed in our issue of 6/19/06.) (In wide release.) THE DA VINCI CODE Ron Howard's film of Dan Brown's novel is faith- ful to both the spirit and the letter of the original. Such loyalty will be balm to the souls of his forty million readers, who have come to accept the book as holy writ. Others will greet the news as they would an outbreak of the plague. The movie stars Tom Hanks as Robert Langdon, an American pro- fessor who, partnered with a young French cryptog- rapher (Audrey Tautou), untangles a knot of clues. These begin with a corpse in the Louvre, continue in a country house owned by a conspiracy expert (Ian McKellen), lead to London for a touch of local color, and end in a Scottish church, where the true descendant of Jesus is revealed, to regrettable sounds of mirth in the audience. Our heroes' opponents in- clude a devilish bishop (Alfred Molina) and a mur- derous monk (Paul Bettany). It should have been possible to mold the nonsense of the novel into brightly colored hokum; instead, Howard, in collu- sion with his screenwriter, Akiva Goldsman, has cho- sen to serve up two and a half hours of verbose and joyless gloom. If you can't face watching this movie, you could always pray for it.-A.L. (5/29/06.) (In wide release.) LA DÉSENCHANTÉE In Benoît Jacquot's arch melodrama, from 1990, Marianne, the bare-breasted warrior maiden of the French Revolution, finds her modern model in a seventeen-year-old Parisian high-school girl who careens romantically through her hard-knock life. Beth (Judith Godrèche) lives with her bedridden and often catatonic mother and an eight-year-old brother; the family gets by on remittances from an elderly doctor who craves her body. The story begins with Beth in bed with a boyfriend whom she calls "the Other"; perversely, he drives her out of his bed and into a daytime disco to seek an- other Other. There follows a jerky rich kid in a pink Lacoste shirt, a knife-throwing middle-aged literary poseur, and a Chinese boy from school whose artistic skills she enlists to plot her revenge, all of whom are merely foils for Beth's brazen ma- neuvers of lust-and-parry. The shifting pairs play out their mind games in grand, gratuitous gestures that are as thoroughly French as Camembert. In French.-Richard Brody (Walter Reade Theatre; June 24-25 and June 27.) DISTRICT B13 Another slickly made piece of action nonsense from Luc Besson, the producer and co-writer. In the near future, the lawless parts of Paris have been walled off into a no-hope zone where two men (Cyril Raf- faelli, David Belle) must save a kidnapped girl and prevent a nuclear explosion. The film follows Bes- son's successful B-movie formula-a short running time, amazingly athletic actors, and a director (Pierre Morel) who has a flashy, quick-cut style. The movie, which features "parkour," the wall-scaling martial art, begins with a high: a sensational, wireless, Jackie Chan-worthy escape from a tenement build- ing and over rooftops. In French.-Bruce Diones (In wide release.) DVD NOTES WHY OUT WEST? When John Ford directed "Stagecoach" (1939), he launched the modern Western and made John Wayne a star. If Ford's name is synonymous with the Western, two colossal new boxed sets, "The John Ford Film Collection" and "The John Wayne- John Ford Film Collection" (both from Warner Home Video), show why: because the Western was Hollywood's political genre par excellence, and Ford was America's greatest political filmmaker. Ford took the newly settled West as a vast his- torical stage on which to dramatize the rise of de- mocracy. In Westerns, he brought to life the abstrac1: functions of government, from defense and diplo- macy to trade and infrastructure, placing on his char- acters a constant civic responsibility. In "Stagecoach," which is set in Arizona in the eighteen-eighties, Ford presents a West that is already becoming Eastemized, with temperance leagues, med- dling church ladies, and plutocratic bankers. The nine travellers who head for the aptly named out- post of Lordsburg are a microcosm of the west- ward expansion: a mistrustful bunch of outcasts and opportunists who must confront the menace of hostile Apaches and take their common fate into their own hands. First among them is the Ringo Kid (John Wayne), a renowned and unjustly con- victed gunslinger who has escaped from jail and is out for revenge. Ringo's romance with a prostitute (Claire Trevor), which unfolds under the benevo- lent eye of a marshal who follows the spirit rather than the letter of the law, also makes "Stagecoach" a poignant, grandly archetypal love story. As secular scripture, the Western was a natural backdrop for romantic heroism. Yet Ford, in his postwar Westerns, called attention to the double- edged role of legend, which provided a shared set of values but risked obscuring reality and clouding judgment. "Fort Apache," from 1948, tells two sto- ries: one about a cruel, misguided, and ultimately suicidal attack ordered against Native Americans by a stiff-necked officer (Henry Fonda) and one about its misrepresentation in tabloid-journalistic lore as a glorious mission. Ford's final Western, the vast, complex "Cheyenne Autumn," from 1964, shows how sensationalistic stories in big-city news- papers caused Congress to pressure the Army into needless brutality against migrating Indians. Ford's own place at the crossroads of legend and fact gave rise to one of his most emotional films, "The Wings of Eagles," from 1957, a bio-pic star- ring Wayne as the Navy flier Frank (Spig) Wead, a longtime friend of Ford's. A reckless air pioneer, Wead was grounded in 1926 by a devastating domestic ac- cident and became a writer of naval stories. Later, he was summoned to Hollywood by a director (who is called John Dodge in the movie) to write scripts for films about the armed forces-including Ford's "They Were Expendable," from 1945. -Richard Brody THE NEW YORK.ER, JUNE 26,2006 15